Eisenhower Receives 2009 Distinguished Hospital Award

For the second consecutive year, Eisenhower Medical Center has been named one of the top hospitals in the United States. According to HealthGrades®, the nation’s leading health care ratings company, Eisenhower is among the nation’s top five percent of hospitals, based on an independent study of mortality and complication rates for nearly 5,000 hospitals.

Eisenhower Medical Center received the HealthGrades 2009 Distinguished Hospital Award for Clinical Excellence™ based on its clinical quality performance. The rankings are determined by the annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence Study.

The study looks at mortality and complication rates for 27 procedures and diagnoses, from bypass surgery to total knee replacement. Researchers examined more than 41 million hospitalization records from the United States Department of Health and Human Services for the years 2005, 2006 and 2007 to determine the top five percent. Hospitals achieving this level of care are designated Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence by HealthGrades. This year, only 270 of the nation’s nearly 5,000 non-federal hospitals will receive this distinction, with fewer than 20 in Southern California. Eisenhower Medical Center is the only hospital in the Coachella Valley to receive the award.

In citing the award winners, the 2009 HealthGrades report notes, “Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence have set the bar for all other United States hospitals and represent the standard for clinical excellence that consumers and payers should demand…. Patients can feel confident that they are receiving the right care, at the right time and by the right team when they are being treated at one the nation’s distinguished hospitals.”

“To have an independent party like HealthGrades validate what we do is an extraordinary achievement, and is a testament to our talented physicians, nurses and staff.””

According to the HealthGrades report, patients admitted to a hospital receiving the Distinguished Hospital Award are, on average, 27 percent less likely to die and eight percent less likely to suffer a major complication. The study also looked specifically at Medicare patients, and found that if all Medicare patients who were hospitalized during the time period of the study had gone to one of the institutions recognized for clinical excellence, an estimated 152,666 lives could have been saved, and 11,772 in-hospital complications may have been avoided.

Hospitals rated among the top five percent in the nation also distinguished themselves with a greater rate of improvement than other hospitals. On average, top hospitals, such as Eisenhower, lowered their average inhospital mortality rates by an average of 18 percent over the years 2005, 2006 and 2007. They also reduced inhospital post-surgical complication rates by four percent—nearly twice the rate of improvement of other hospitals. The award-winning hospitals achieved these results across a broad range of specialties, including cardiac, pulmonary, critical care, stroke, gastrointestinal, vascular and orthopedics.

“Ensuring our patients’ safety and delivering the highest quality health care available today is our top priority,” said G. Aubrey Serfling, President and Chief Executive Officer, Eisenhower Medical Center, upon receiving the award. “To have an independent party like HealthGrades validate what we do is an extraordinary achievement, and is a testament to our talented physicians, nurses and staff.”